Page 1 of 2 12 LastLast
Results 1 to 15 of 22
  1. #1
    Saoirse Ronan The Accuser CaptainMar-Vell92 of the Kree's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2018
    Posts
    1,603

    Default Why i hated Bendis run on Guardians of the Galaxy

    Trust me, Bendis' run on the guardians in one of the worst comic runs i've ever read.


    I will say that I have not read the post-Secret Wars issues at all, but I've read all of the Marvel NOW! series, as well as all the Annihilation and original Guardians of the Galaxy related books, and I can tell you that my biggest problem with the series is two-fold, though both items are closely related. That is, I think Bendis' Guardians of the Galaxy suffers from a total lack of conflict. This lack of conflict means the book feels inconsequential.

    In the series, the Guardians are allegedly guarding Earth from threats (despite Earth having a truckload of heroes already), and it seems like instead, aside from utterly failing to notice Thanos coming during Infinity and helping out SWORD during that crossover, they spend most of their time simply recruiting new members who Bendis inevitably does nothing with (Iron Man, Angela, and Captain Marvel being notable examples, with Agent Venom showing up just long enough for them all to get kidnapped in the most interesting part of the whole run, but one that doesn't resolve the second part of my complaint). Sure, the original run added tons of characters left and right, but they were always added in order to resolve a particularly story beat, like Jack Flag with Star-Lord in the Negative Zone, or Moon Dragon and... all that stuff that happens with her. In Bendis' GotG, Captain Marvel joins for literally no reason except he wanted her on his team, for example.


    Finally, the new Guardians have no agency on their own. Almost all of Bendis' Guardians stories have the team sitting on a ship and something terrible happens and they have to go fix it. There is no agency on the part of any of the characters, and none of the cast WANT anything. Every character needs to have some reason to be there, and none of them do anymore. As such, the stories feel flat and, again, pointless. The teenage X-Men are more heroic and have more agency in the crossover issues than the Guardians do, which is sad, because they're, well, kids.

    There's no character growth, no plot in 4 years just random unexplained changes to any of the changes in character personalities.

    1) Drax is suddenly turned from brooding space Kratos to dumbass with knives.

    2) Rocket Tuns from tactically ingenious blue collar weisenheimer into a blood thirsty blood-knight howling for murder at every turn. (Blam murdered you!)

    3) Gamora becomes the woman in distress who needs to be saved every once in awhile instead of being one of the greatest martial artists and assassins in the known universe.

    4) Star-lord turns into a falstaffian man-child pirate from Sarcastic and remorseful space cop.

    5) Thanos is turned from a morally ambiguous magnificent bastard schemer and philosopher into a foolish saturday morning cartoon villain who gets wrecked by street level characters and mid tier characters.

    6) Groot is probably the only who hasn't been changed much, and that's only because Bendis had no idea what to really do with him. Well except that he gets destroyed like ALL THE TIME!


    Finally, after nearly four years, Bendis and Marvel had no choice but to address what went on in the cancerverse with the Original Sin tie-in. Yet, in many ways, the damage of letting the topic slide had already been done. As it hit in the summer of 2014, the explanation turned out the pinnacle of suckitude of this run, especially when Bendis had claimed he had a “great” and long planned story in mind from the moment he began to work on the characters. (tell me lies tell me sweet little lies)

    Truthfully, many aspects of this three issue arc did not even line up with the Avengers Assembled arc Bendis had already done. Further, the story did not even line up within itself either. Leaving aside the preposterous lazy notion that Nova (Richard Rider)’s arm could just be sliced off when he had energy shielding capable of protecting him from near limitless damage at super luminal speeds, Richard Rider was shown to die in a place where Bendis already said (and showed) you couldn’t die. Personally, I didn’t need a masterčiece of writing, but something that made a lick of sense would have been nice.

    Even more mind-baffling, the three issue comic was severely decompressed, featured numerous spelling and grammar mistakes (Including spelling Richard Rider’s name wrong, like Ryder instead of Rider, and some cases two different ways in the same issue) i felt life the comic wasn’t even edited. Certainly the poor, disjointed quality of the arc contrasted with Bendis early claims that he had done “significant research” (AH!) on the character prior to taking ahold of GOTG.

    The worse part of this arc was that the years of friendship and partnership between Peter Quill and Richard Rider was just ended so abruptly and devoid of emotion. Richard Rider was dug up just to throw dirt on his three year old dead body. As the story went on, there was nothing lasting or mysterious about the reveals and answers….the arc was just bad, ill-researched and nonsensical.


    Yet, Bendis subsequent writing made matters worse. Not averse to showing thought bubbles in his comics, Bendis gave no lasting reason or noticeable imprint of Richard Rider’s death/ legacy in Peter Quill’s actions or thoughts. In fact, Quill hardly would even mention Rider, or think of him ever again.

    To date, I don’t recall Quill ever interacted with the new Nova, Sam Alexander. Again, that makes little sense to me.

    Long gone was any sort of notion he was still troubled by the 350k people he had sacrificed to stop a rogue herald of Galactus, the death and dismemberment of his close companion or perhaps even the months and hopeless months of gritty intergalactic war against Annihilus and Ultron.

    Nope, this Quill was cool with all that noise. Without the friendship of Rider or his old realistic motivations, the character became a silly gag character who more often made fun of the old model than embraced what had been mysterious and complex about the old Quill. Additionally, with his “daddy issues” as a newfound chief motivation, Quill seemed rather banal and off, especially considering where the character had been. Even worse, Bendis never constructed a logical bridge to show readers how any of the changes got from a point A to point B.

    I'm not saying the GOTG has to be a gritty and violent military science fiction like Warhammer 40,000 or having Jim Starlin's brand of trippy existenzialism to be good, but they need an author who cares about continuity and knows how to write space operas. Thankfully i think the GOTG are in decent hands with Donny Cates.
    Last edited by CaptainMar-Vell92 of the Kree; 11-15-2019 at 01:36 AM.
    I think an easy way to look at Thanos stories is that anything written by Jim Starlin, Ron Marz and Keith Giffen is the real Thanos while anything written by other authors should be dismissed as a Thanosi clone.

  2. #2
    Saoirse Ronan The Accuser CaptainMar-Vell92 of the Kree's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2018
    Posts
    1,603

    Default

    What do you think?
    I think an easy way to look at Thanos stories is that anything written by Jim Starlin, Ron Marz and Keith Giffen is the real Thanos while anything written by other authors should be dismissed as a Thanosi clone.

  3. #3
    Astonishing Member your_name_here's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jul 2018
    Posts
    2,253

    Default

    I have faith in Ewing and what he intends to do in 2020. He wrote a short segment in the Guardians Annual and I feel (although he only wrote about Nova and Quasar) he understands what DNA crafted, and why people like it.
    Cates hasn’t been bad, I still feel like he wasn’t exactly too sure where to take them either, though.

    Bendis’ run is just terrible.

  4. #4
    Mighty Member
    Join Date
    May 2014
    Posts
    1,599

    Default

    It's a lot of text to say that the reason you dislike Bendis's GotG is the same reason anyone hates Bendis at all. The man simply does not care about the previous or consistent characterization of characters, and if you had simple said you don't like Bendis's Gotg, people would already know why. You can slap most of his 616 work in the phrase "I don't like Bendis's ___" and people would know why.

  5. #5
    Saoirse Ronan The Accuser CaptainMar-Vell92 of the Kree's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2018
    Posts
    1,603

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by your_name_here View Post
    I have faith in Ewing and what he intends to do in 2020. He wrote a short segment in the Guardians Annual and I feel (although he only wrote about Nova and Quasar) he understands what DNA crafted, and why people like it.
    Cates hasn’t been bad, I still feel like he wasn’t exactly too sure where to take them either, though.

    Bendis’ run is just terrible.
    I read in a interview that he likes Nova and understands the appeal of Richard Rider.

    I hope the GOTG show up in Annihilation Scourge.
    I think an easy way to look at Thanos stories is that anything written by Jim Starlin, Ron Marz and Keith Giffen is the real Thanos while anything written by other authors should be dismissed as a Thanosi clone.

  6. #6
    Saoirse Ronan The Accuser CaptainMar-Vell92 of the Kree's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2018
    Posts
    1,603

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by scribbleMind View Post
    It's a lot of text to say that the reason you dislike Bendis's GotG is the same reason anyone hates Bendis at all. The man simply does not care about the previous or consistent characterization of characters, and if you had simple said you don't like Bendis's Gotg, people would already know why. You can slap most of his 616 work in the phrase "I don't like Bendis's ___" and people would know why.
    True but his Avengers never reached GOTG level of suckitude.
    I think an easy way to look at Thanos stories is that anything written by Jim Starlin, Ron Marz and Keith Giffen is the real Thanos while anything written by other authors should be dismissed as a Thanosi clone.

  7. #7
    Fantastic Member Mormegil's Avatar
    Join Date
    Mar 2016
    Posts
    324

    Default

    I stopped reading when the word retard was used.

  8. #8
    Saoirse Ronan The Accuser CaptainMar-Vell92 of the Kree's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2018
    Posts
    1,603

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Mormegil View Post
    I stopped reading when the word retard was used.
    I fixed it.
    I think an easy way to look at Thanos stories is that anything written by Jim Starlin, Ron Marz and Keith Giffen is the real Thanos while anything written by other authors should be dismissed as a Thanosi clone.

  9. #9
    Astonishing Member legion_quest's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jun 2014
    Location
    Southampton, UK
    Posts
    2,858

    Default

    Most of it was MCU synergy + Bendis being allowed to get away with anything because he sold big enough numbers.

    While you aren't wrong with anything you say, and I agree the run is awful, I can see what Marvel wanted; to recreate the film on the page and get people to read it.

    DnA's run was great, but it didnt sell. Bendis sold x3 the amount with his run, at least at the start, so he got to write his way
    I will raise my throne above the Stars of God

  10. #10
    Mighty Member kevlon's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2015
    Posts
    1,931

    Default

    His run was terrible

  11. #11
    Saoirse Ronan The Accuser CaptainMar-Vell92 of the Kree's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2018
    Posts
    1,603

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by legion_quest View Post

    DnA's run was great, but it didnt sell. Bendis sold x3 the amount with his run, at least at the start, so he got to write his way
    Reminds me of what happened with Fallout. Fallout 3 and 4 sold 10 times more than 1 and 2 but they are widely hated by the oldschool fans who grew up with the originals. At least they got New Vegas and Wasteland 2-3.

    DnA's didn't sell much because their material never got much advertisement and the characters never showed up in other books, and because most people don't care about the Marvel universe outside of Spider-Man and X-Men (although Hulk is quite popular in pop culture). Doesn't help that their stories happened at the same time as highly promoted storylines like Secret Invasion and Dark Reign.

  12. #12
    Astonishing Member
    Join Date
    May 2014
    Posts
    3,770

    Default

    Bendis's run was a huge disappointment, but it got even worse after that damn film came out. Admittedly, I liked the first one, but by the time the second one was released, it felt very 'been there, done that'. Star-Lord was much better in Abnett and Lanning's hands.

  13. #13
    Saoirse Ronan The Accuser CaptainMar-Vell92 of the Kree's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2018
    Posts
    1,603

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by kcekada View Post
    Bendis's run was a huge disappointment, but it got even worse after that damn film came out. Admittedly, I liked the first one, but by the time the second one was released, it felt very 'been there, done that'. Star-Lord was much better in Abnett and Lanning's hands.
    Indeed. Giffen/Abnett's Star-Lord Is a more intriguing character.
    I think an easy way to look at Thanos stories is that anything written by Jim Starlin, Ron Marz and Keith Giffen is the real Thanos while anything written by other authors should be dismissed as a Thanosi clone.

  14. #14
    Fantastic Member Stick Figure's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2017
    Posts
    311

    Default

    I love just about everything Bendis does but I’ll admit this was one of his weaker efforts.

  15. #15
    Saoirse Ronan The Accuser CaptainMar-Vell92 of the Kree's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2018
    Posts
    1,603

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Stick Figure View Post
    I love just about everything Bendis does but I’ll admit this was one of his weaker efforts.
    I think GOTG and Civil War II are his worst works.

    If it wasn't for the MCU he wouldn't have touched Marvel Cosmic characters with a ten foot pole.
    I think an easy way to look at Thanos stories is that anything written by Jim Starlin, Ron Marz and Keith Giffen is the real Thanos while anything written by other authors should be dismissed as a Thanosi clone.

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •